Cisco buys IT management start-up

Cisco Systems signed an agreement on Wednesday to acquire network management start-up Jahi Networks for $16 million.

Jahi, a San Jose, Calif.-based privately held firm, develops interfaces that help networked devices talk to each other more efficiently.

"A major challenge in providing network management applications is the lack of consistent means of communicating with the variety of devices that comprise an end-to-end network," Cliff Meltzer, Cisco senior vice president, said in a statement. "Jahi's technology will help Cisco build a practical and unique solution for management of existing and new devices."

Jahi's technology provides a virtual view of devices connected in a network. This overview reduces complexity and cuts down on overall costs, Cisco said.

Customers writing their own scripts and applications can use Jahi's technology to interact with various Cisco products in the network.

Cisco says it hopes to close the acquisition of Jahi in the second quarter of 2005. Jahi was founded in 2003 and has 20 employees in San Jose and Hyderabad, India.

Cisco had a spate of acquisitions in recent months. In addition to buying fellow network management firm NetSolve, it acquired Perfigo to beef up its security lineup and Dynamicsoft, which makes software tools based on Session Initiation Protocol.